Abstract

This article considers the early reception of Góngora's Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea by analysing the Baroque mythological fable `Fábula de la Naya' from Pedro Soto de Rojas' Desengaño de amor en rimas (1623). I argue that Soto restores the prominence of Galatea, as depicted in the classical versions of the myth, by placing the Gongorist Polyphemic lament in the mouth of a female protagonist. The self-authored notes which accompany Soto's fable gesture towards an ambitious metapoetic agenda, which places the Naiad at the heart of his directed reading. The fragile eloquence with which this female speaker is invested works against this collection's overall movement towards closure and containment. Soto's Fábula may be read as a sylvan intersection in terms of seventeenth-century literary controversy; Naya, and her union with the conventional Fenixardo, becomes the poetic embodiment of a tense dialogue between poetic tradition and innovation.

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